Wayne Crews, vice president for policy at the Competitive Enterprise Institute, combed through the 81,405 pages of the Federal Registry — which contains the nation’s regulations on businesses, and state and local governments — and cites a report showing that regulation cost the economy a whopping $1.75 trillion in 2008.

“If regulatory costs remain largely hidden from public view, regulating will become increasingly attractive compared with increasingly unpopular taxing and spending,” Crews writes. “Rather than pay directly and book expenses for new initiatives, the federal government can require the private sector — as well as state and local governments — to pay for federal initiatives through compliance costs.”

== Are these numbers legit? I mean isn't a lot of the cost of regulatory compliance in the public workers (paid for by taxes already)? or are they just talking about the private costs of preparing and filing all the reports certifying all the products paying all the fees... Are they including the deductions you can take for all the fees and "expenses" of running your business? Seems that could reduce the 1.75 trillion by 30%.

"Compare New York City, where a license to own and operate a taxi is $603,000, to Washington, D.C.," George Mason University economist Walter Williams said on my Fox Business show last week. "There are not many black-owned taxis in New York City. But in Washington, most are owned by blacks." Why? Because in Washington, "it takes $200 to get a license to own and operate one taxi. That makes the difference."

Ask Jestina Clayton. Ten years ago, she moved from Africa to Utah. She assumed she could support her children with the hair-braiding skills she learned in Sierra Leone. For four years, she braided hair in her home. She made decent money. But then the government shut her down because she doesn't have an expensive cosmetology license that requires 2,000 hours of classroom time -- 50 weeks of useless instruction. The Institute for Justice, the public-interest law firm that fights such outrages, says "not one of those 2,000 hours teaches African hair-braiding."

Once upon a time, one in 20 workers needed government permission to work in their occupation. Today, it's one in three. We lose some freedom every day.

"Occupational licensing laws fall hardest on minorities, on poor, on elderly workers who want to start a new career or change careers," Avelar said. "(Licensing laws) just help entrenched businesses keep out competition."

I'll save Sarvis the trouble and put the counter-argument out there. Compliance with regulation costs $1.7 trillion, but wouldn't the societal cost be much greater if that regulation wasn't there to protect people, the environment, etc etc.

As for NYC taxi's I'm not sure if you could really consider that 'regulation'. The city auctions off a certain number of taxi medallions (licenses) every so often. It's a revenue matter - there are a limited supply of taxi licenses, and people compete with each other in order to buy them.

Having said all that, the situation has been handled, so this thread is pretty much at an end. -Kossuth

fair point about the cost of regulation equaling the cost of not having it.

however, i'll still argue its basically a tax (raises the cost of taxi licenses) or simply a protection racket.

It was interesting to watch how wind energy became a valuable commodity and government was right there to step in and develop permits... to make sure they got a cut of people developing this new resource.